Our Employees

What do INNOVIM employees do every day? Programming and management, procurement and documentation, our employees are called upon to wear many different hats in the course of a day and a career. Here, a few INNOVIM employees tell you what it’s like to walk in their shoes.

I interface with customers and peers to develop and deploy ground systems that control satellites. The satellite data is used by scientists and I help the scientists obtain the data and understand anomalies seen within the data.

I document the scientific algorithms that produce land products for the MODIS instruments aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. With the assistance of the original scientists and software developers, I’m working to write documents that explain how the scientific theory, such as equations to calculate certain values, is turned into computer code.

I start off each morning going through my email from home, before even reaching the office to put out any “fires.” I receive action and reporting emails about the science departments on a variety of things such as updating our lab phone directory, weekly report submissions & monthly science highlights, publication calls, and travel updates. I must answer for our Lab on these issues.

I stop hackers cold in their tracks when they try to infiltrate National Weather Service servers and secure systems, and help migrate old obsolete systems to new technology… It’s like Christmas everyday!

I directly support our Lab Chief and six scientists, support their activities, and manage three teleconferences. Travel orders are a big part of my job, managing calendars and scheduling meetings. When I am managing travel orders, there are usually a myriad of approvals, especially under travel sequestration guidelines. It’s my responsibility to know what to do and how to accomplish travel packages as the customer typically does not know – they just want to take their trip. It’s a challenge but I enjoy it and there are many admins that I work with and we all help each other.

I write and edit weather safety and related publications, update more than a dozen websites, answer weather questions from the public, send out official service change notices and generally serve as the ad hoc problem solver for graphics, editing, layout and website issues. No two days are the same!

As a Software Engineer on Ozone Monitoring Instrument Science Investigator-Led Processing System (OMI SIPS), I am responsible for the development and maintenance of the Atmospheric Composition Processing System. I also maintain NASA’s Ozone Air Quality Website.

At INNOVIM, we take our work seriously, but we know how to have fun too. One INNOVIM employee likes to name his servers and systems after different parts of the beer brewing process. Another has rules if you want to reminisce about departed colleagues: only after 3 o’clock. Otherwise she’ll tell you to come back later.

What other quirky characters can you find at INNOVIM? With each new addition, the INNOVIM personality changes just a bit. Each individual’s unique vision and voice contribute to make INNOVIM what it is. We seek out employees who help us move where we want to go.

Do you have what it takes to be an INNOVIM employee? If you value these characteristics, you might be a good fit:

INNOVIM employees enjoy their jobs, but they also know that they will have plenty of opportunities to grow and develop over the course of their INNOVIM careers. Here are a few of the ways INNOVIM employees have found to do just that.

I have a great deal of autonomy in my job; as a support person that’s atypical, but the customers trust me to handle tasks without micromanaging or checking up on me. It’s a great privilege to work in that kind of environment.

At one of the meetings I attended, I met Professor Michael Leyton from Rutgers University, and helped him get involved with our group. Apparently, he was impressed by the work he saw me doing there and invited me to be an International Faculty member of the International Institute of Interoperability Science.

The best part of my job is the ability to learn something new almost every day.

My job allows me to interface with a highly experienced and knowledgeable group of people. I strongly believe that this has helped me in the development of my career.

My work led me to be involved with the IEEE Information Reuse and Integration conference. Over the past several years I’ve worked my way up from author to session chair to being a member of the program and best paper selection committees. It’s a nice acknowledgement that my skills from working at INNOVIM are recognized and valued by that community.